Josie listened to him talk about organists and limousine services and bronze memorial tablets, but when he pulled out the catalog of caskets and suggested either the Aurora or the Majestic, Josie’s palms began to sweat, and when he asked whether it would be an open or closed casket, the room seemed to grow fifty degrees hotter.

“Excuse me,” she said, and walked outside.

The night before, she had found an old pack of cigarettes in the kitchen and slipped it into her bag, thinking that, if nothing else, at least she would have something to do with her hands. Now she lit one and inhaled deeply. It burned, but she held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could. Her mother’s dead body was already in that building, being embalmed, or having its lips painted, or its hair curled and styled. She wasn’t quite sure why the sight of the body was so terrifying to her. Her mother was, after all, dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Josie dropped the cigarette and ground it into the marble with the toe of her boot. It was cold out, and she hadn’t brought a jacket. She put her hands in her pockets and felt the scrap of paper with Devesh’s phone number. She wondered how long it would take for him to become worried, and if he would call Mary to see where she was. If he had been here, he would have told her that her mother wasn’t really dead at all, that her soul was strapped to the revolving machine of the material universe, going around and around like a Ferris wheel, each life a new rotation. They had discussed this on the way home from seeing the Hindi movie. He told her about Krishna’s explanation of life and death, and although in the theater, she had felt the possibility as keenly as his hand in hers, with the car carrying her solidly home and the world speeding by her window, it now seemed foolish, and she laughed at him and questioned how a doctor, someone of scientific mind, could believe that nonsense. He grew quiet and said it was a metaphor, but for the first time she knew she had wounded him.

She did not like to think about the possibility of a spinning Ferris wheel of life, nor did she like to think about karmic retribution.

The door swung open and her aunt walked out.

“You okay?” she asked.

Josie nodded and lit another cigarette.

“Do you have to smoke those?”

“Yes.”

Her aunt sighed. “Great; we can have a double funeral.” She put the brochures in her purse and took out a map. “I want to look at the gravesite. I think it’s just up this hill. We can walk.”